Notable & Newsworthy

October 2023
BEVs Have a Weight Problem That Can’t Be Solved with Traditional Approaches

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Figure 1: Conversion to 48V system reduces vehicle total current draw from over 250A to under 75A without impacting the electrical content of the vehicle.

Battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) have a serious weight problem and not the type Weight Watchers® can fix. Many BEVs are as much as 33% heavier than their internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE) counterparts. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board noted “The Ford F-150 Lightning is betwee
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Date:
10/31/2023
PSDcast – The Resurgent Nuclear Drive

CEO and head of reactor development over at NANO Nuclear Energy, James Walker

Why is there suddenly a renewed interest in nuclear energy? The CEO and head of reactor development over at NANO Nuclear Energy, James Walker, discusses.
Date:
10/30/2023
PSDcast – The Columbia Energy Storage Project

Alliant Energy’s director of engineering and customer solutions, Mike Bremel

Alliant Energy was selected for a grant of up to approximately $30 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) for a proposed 200-megawatt hour energy storage system. Alliant Energy’s director of engineering and customer solutions, Mike Bremel, jo
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Date:
10/24/2023
PSDcast – Preventing Early Failure Rates

Littelfuse’s Martin Schulz

Why are power semiconductors limited in their service life and what are some of the biggest contributing factors to early failure rates? Littelfuse’s Martin Schulz is on the call.
Date:
10/16/2023
PSDcast – Off-Grid Solar Charging at a California Vineyard

Tom McCalmont, CEO and co-founder of Paired Power

Paired Power and Monarch Tractor are announcing their partnership to power Kaerskov Vineyard with 100 percent clean, off-grid energy for its farming operations. And on the line to discuss it is Tom McCalmont, CEO and co-founder of Paired Power. 
Date:
10/03/2023
Flexible, Dual Output, 6-Phase Buck Controller Drives 12 V to 1.0 V/200 A Core Supply with 90.0% Efficiency

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Figure 1. Schematic of a 6-phase 1.0 V/200 A LTC7852 converter with FDMF5820DC DrMos. The FSWITCH = 400 kHz.

ASICs, FPGAs, and processors in high-performance communication, servers, and computing systems require core power supplies that can produce voltages of 1.0 V (or less) directly from a 12 V or intermediate bus—with maximum load currents sometimes above 200 A. These supplies must meet stringent efficiency and pe
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Date:
10/01/2023
New EU Laws Help Startups Tackle Big Tech

Ally Winning, European Editor, PSD

The EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, two laws that aim to create a safer digital space while protecting users’ fundamental rights and establishing a level playing field for businesses, have now come into force. In the past, the EU has made sector-specific interventions at EU level, bu
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Date:
10/01/2023
Our Vehicles are Gobbling up our Personal Data

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

The IoT has the potential to fulfill the grand promise of the Internet – to unite the entire globe by uniting every electronic device, system, and appliance in one worldwide network. “The collective network of connected devices and the technology that facilitates communication between devices and the c
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Date:
10/01/2023
IoT and Smart Cities: What Makes Sense?

Kevin Parmenter, Director, Applications Engineering. TSC, America

The first IoT device is said to be a soda machine in the 1980s at Carnegie Mellon University that could report inventory and temperature. Others say it was an internet toaster introduced at the University of Cambridge in 1990. Either way, this technology has come a long way from its humble beginnings. According to
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Date:
10/01/2023
Enabling Sustainable Building Management Systems

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Figure 1: A T1L-enabled building controller

With its 10Mbps data rate, support for various topologies, and power over a single-twisted pair cable, 10BASE-T1L provides seamless Ethernet connectivity to DDC controllers and edge nodes in point-to-point, ring, and line network configurations. It offers real-time control and overcomes the limitations of previous pr
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Date:
10/01/2023
Avoid Energy Challenges Through Partial Discharge Monitoring

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It has never been so tough to run a business in the UK. The first quarter of 2023 saw the largest net decrease in business numbers, with over 105,000 closing and just 79,000 opening. At a time where all sectors are feeling the squeeze of rising running costs and high energy bills due to months of inflation and ec
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Date:
10/01/2023
How a Unified IOT Controller Can Simplify Smart Factory Installations

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Figure 1: Current IIoT Edge to Cloud Infrastructure

­The technologies underlying IoT devices could also benefit the industrial sector. This resulted in the proliferation of ‘The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)’ edge devices (sensors and actuators) using various wireless communications protocols. In theory, this flexibility should be a welcome development, bu
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Date:
10/01/2023
Building Efficient, Safe, and Reliable Smart Cities Begins with Robust Heat Pump Design

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Figure 1: Heat pump in cooling mode

The biggest megatrend for smart cities is improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. Developing smart electronics designs for heat pumps, water heaters, metering, and thermostats is mission-critical to achieving success. This article will help electronics design engineers improve their new heat pu
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Date:
10/01/2023
High-Voltage Capacitors for Next-Generation EVs

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Figure 1: The application of safety capacitors in an electric vehicle's onboard charging circuit

The automotive industry is currently undergoing one of the most significant changes it has seen. Whereas development within the sector has been more evolutionary for the past few decades, the transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) to hybrid and battery electric vehicles (EVs) is far more revolutionary. Be
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Date:
10/01/2023
Multi-Dimensional MOSFET Modeling With Interactive Datasheets

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Figure 1: Reading MOSFET RDS(on) from a standard datasheet

Datasheets are often long and cumbersome, meaning locating and interpreting the required information is not always trivial. Furthermore, the meaning of the listed parameters is rarely explained in the datasheets, and even the slight differences in how they are interpreted can be critical for how a device behaves in
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Date:
10/01/2023
All You Need to Know About Using IGBTs

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Figure 1: Field Trench Stop IGBT Structure

The medium-to-high power applications that used IGBTs still exist, as do the devices themselves. In this article we will take a detailed look at IGBTs and then consider existing and emerging topologies that they are suitable for. IGBTs: Physical Structure An IGBT is a semiconductor transistor, or semiconductor swit
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Date:
10/01/2023
Keeping California Golden

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Figure 1: Installers can encourage battery uptake by educating homeowners on value stacking. Time of use savings, load shifting, oversizing and smart product selection are all key to increasing the profitability of energy storage

For several years, driven by lucrative financial incentives, California saw a massive increase in solar installations. However, with the changes to net metering incentives introduced in April, homeowners and installers alike are faced with the unknown. California is appropriately named the Golden State, no
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Date:
10/01/2023
Smarter Cities Provide a Sustainable Future

Ally Winning, European Editor, PSD

Welcome to the October issue of Power Systems Design Europe. In the northern hemisphere, October is the middle of Autumn, and when the temperatures really begin to fall. It is normally the time to turn back on the heating in our homes and workplaces after the summer. Our energy usage accelerates even more as we
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Date:
10/01/2023
Collecting Data and Sharing Information to Improve Our Quality of Life

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

Welcome to the October issue, and as we inch closer to the creepiness, kookiness, and spookiness (with apologies to a certain family) at the end of this month, we’ve got a banger of a topic for you, in the form of the “IoT and Smart Cities.” These two ideas, concepts, and technologies will shape the futur
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Date:
10/01/2023
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